The main issue facing Signal Mountain and its residents, an incumbent town council member told Alexian Village residents Tuesday evening, is money.
“Everything the town uses costs more,” explained Dick Gee, Signal’s liaison with the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority.
For example, he said, improvements to the town’s sewer system eventually will total about $3.8 million.
“WWTA owns our sewer system,” he noted, “and eventually they’re going to ask us to help with funding that.”
Huge expenses such as that, he said, come on top of more traditional ones such as employee health insurance which “keeps going up (even though) we keep monkeying around with it to try to control the costs.”
Part of the reason expenses are going up, according to another incumbent, is that the number of residents is increasing and that puts additional strains on resources.
In addition to new families moving into housing, Susan Robertson told the crowd, new housing is being built to accommodate people who want to live here.
“Hamilton County expects to have 80,000 new residents in the next 10 years,” she said, “and many will come up here to live because of our schools (and other amenities).”
Consequently, there will be even more traffic traveling the road up the mountain and more students in mountaintop schools, she noted.
Incumbent Annette Allen – noting that she grew up on the mountain but moved away after graduating from college and getting married – said she saw firsthand while living in large cities what growth that has not been planned for can do to communities.
“We need to insure that we’re ready” for the growth that occurs, she told the crowd.
Would-be council member Chris Howley said he’s lived on Signal for 13 years.
During that time, he said, he has been “very active” in coaching and other youth athletic programs as well as the country club and St. Augustine Catholic Church.
Echoing Councilman Gee, Mr. Howley said WWTA and other maintenance-related capital projects are going to cost the town millions of dollars during coming years.
As a successful businessman, Mr. Howley said, he has the experience needed to help the town cope successfully with that kind of challenge.
The final candidate, Dr. Robert Spalding – noting that he worked as a fulltime officer in the Hamilton County Sheriff’s department and other jobs before becoming a physician –
said the town will have to come up with about $10 million in coming years to cover costs of necessary projects.
“What we need is sensible growth," he said, noting that after the money owed for the new school is paid off in a couple of years the tax levied to cover that expense is scheduled to retire.
But other needs will still have to be met, he said. “And if it doesn’t come from businesses it will have to come from property taxes.”